IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/88614.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Personality traits as an engine of knowledge: A quantile regression approach

Author

Listed:
  • Polemis, Michael

Abstract

We use a unique micro-level data set to investigate the impact of personality traits on education. To the best of our knowledge this is the first study shedding light on the contribution of each of the Big Five personality traits on the education decision made by the individuals. Our findings, uncover a significant effect of non-cognitive skills on the level of education. Specifically, we argue that the estimated signs of the non-cognitive skills remain stable across the quantiles. It is shown that people with high emotional stability invest in human capital. Lastly, our model survived robustness checks under the inclusion of two aggregated higher-order factors.

Suggested Citation

  • Polemis, Michael, 2018. "Personality traits as an engine of knowledge: A quantile regression approach," MPRA Paper 88614, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:88614
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/88614/1/MPRA_paper_88614.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cobb-Clark, Deborah A. & Schurer, Stefanie, 2012. "The stability of big-five personality traits," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 115(1), pages 11-15.
    2. James Heckman & Rodrigo Pinto & Peter Savelyev, 2013. "Understanding the Mechanisms through Which an Influential Early Childhood Program Boosted Adult Outcomes," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(6), pages 2052-2086, October.
    3. Raymundo M Campos-Vazquez & Eduardo M Medina-Cortina & Roberto Velez-Grajales, 2018. "Cognitive ability and economic preferences: evidence from survey and experimental data in Mexico," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 38(3), pages 1406-1414.
    4. repec:wrk:wrkemf:16 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Distante, Roberta & Petrella, Ivan & Santoro, Emiliano, 2018. "Gibrat’s law and quantile regressions: An application to firm growth," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 5-9.
    6. Hoeschler, Peter & Balestra, Simone & Backes-Gellner, Uschi, 2018. "The development of non-cognitive skills in adolescence," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 40-45.
    7. M. Jones, 1992. "Estimating densities, quantiles, quantile densities and density quantiles," Annals of the Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Springer;The Institute of Statistical Mathematics, vol. 44(4), pages 721-727, December.
    8. Halkos, George & Polemis, Michael, 2018. "Does market structure trigger efficiency? Evidence for the USA before and after the financial crisis," MPRA Paper 84511, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Jose A. F. Machado & Jose Mata, 2000. "Box-Cox quantile regression and the distribution of firm sizes," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 15(3), pages 253-274.
    10. Konrad C. Schäfer & Jörg Schwiebert, 2018. "The Impact Of Personality Traits On Wage Growth And The Gender Wage Gap," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 70(1), pages 20-34, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Halkos, George & Polemis, Michael, 2018. "Does market structure trigger efficiency? Evidence for the USA before and after the financial crisis," MPRA Paper 84511, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Esteban García-Miralles & Miriam Gensowski, 2020. "Are Children's Socio-Emotional Skills Shaped by Parental Health Shocks?," CEBI working paper series 20-21, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. The Center for Economic Behavior and Inequality (CEBI).
    3. Dasgupta, Utteeyo & Gangadharan, Lata & Maitra, Pushkar & Mani, Subha, 2017. "Searching for preference stability in a state dependent world," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 17-32.
    4. Lordan, Grace & McGuire, Alistair, 2019. "Widening the High School Curriculum to Include Soft Skill Training: Impacts on Health, Behaviour, Emotional Wellbeing and Occupational Aspirations," IZA Discussion Papers 12439, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Deborah Cobb-Clark, 2015. "Locus of control and the labor market," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 4(1), pages 1-19, December.
    6. Glewwe, Paul & Song, Yang & Zou, Xianqiang, 2022. "Labor market outcomes, cognitive skills, and noncognitive skills in rural China," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 193(C), pages 294-311.
    7. Jonathan Norris, 2019. "Identify economics: social influence and skill development," Working Papers 1908, University of Strathclyde Business School, Department of Economics.
    8. Alderotti, Giammarco & Rapallini, Chiara & Traverso, Silvio, 2023. "The Big Five personality traits and earnings: A meta-analysis," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    9. Schnitzlein, Daniel D. & Stephani, Jens, 2016. "Locus of Control and low-wage mobility," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 164-177.
    10. Marco Angrisani & Marco Cipriani & Antonio Guarino & Ryan Kendall & Julen Zarate-Pina, 2024. "Non-Cognitive Skills at the Time of COVID-19: An Experiment with Professional Traders and Students," Quarterly Journal of Finance (QJF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 14(02), pages 1-37, June.
    11. Adriana Lleras-Muney & Matthew Miller & Shuyang Sheng & Veronica T. Sovero, 2020. "Party On: The Labor Market Returns to Social Networks in Adolescence," NBER Working Papers 27337, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Laura Turner & Aloysius Siow & Gueorgui Kambourov, 2014. "Relationship Skills in the Labor and Marriage Markets," 2014 Meeting Papers 155, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    13. Jiaming Soh & Kegon T. K. Tan, 2020. "The Nurture Effects of Multidimensional Parental Skills on College Attainment," Journal of Human Capital, University of Chicago Press, vol. 14(1), pages 1-42.
    14. Chih‐Sheng Hsieh & Hans van Kippersluis, 2018. "Smoking initiation: Peers and personality," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 9(2), pages 825-863, July.
    15. Anger, Silke & Camehl, Georg & Peter, Frauke, 2017. "Involuntary job loss and changes in personality traits," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 71-91.
    16. Gensowski, Miriam & Gørtz, Mette, 2024. "The education-health gradient: Revisiting the role of socio-emotional skills," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    17. Bernd Fitzenberger & Gary Mena & Jan Nimczik & Uwe Sunde, 2022. "Personality Traits Across the Life Cycle: Disentangling Age, Period and Cohort Effects," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 132(646), pages 2141-2172.
    18. Fletcher, Jason M., 2013. "The effects of personality traits on adult labor market outcomes: Evidence from siblings," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 122-135.
    19. Laible, Marie-Christine & Anger, Silke & Baumann, Martina, 2020. "Personality Traits and Further Training," IAB-Discussion Paper 202034, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany].
    20. Susanne Kuger & Jan Marcus & C. Katharina Spiess, 2017. "Does Quality of Early Childhood Education and Care Affect the Home Learning Environment of Children?," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1687, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Non-cognitive skills; Big Five personality traits; Education; Quantiles;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C31 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Cross-Sectional Models; Spatial Models; Treatment Effect Models; Quantile Regressions; Social Interaction Models
    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • I24 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Inequality

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:88614. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.